


Barbarian

by zemph147



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Choking, Descriptions of gore, Face-Fucking, Gunplay, M/M, Mycroft makes a lot of poor choices, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sadism, Spanking, but not particularly safe or sane, discussion of suicide, the sex is very rough, very consensual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 16:16:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2116455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zemph147/pseuds/zemph147
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft Holmes has two weaknesses. One is his brother. The other he keeps in a rural lake house, like an animal in a cage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barbarian

**Author's Note:**

> Very, very loosely inspired by one of my favorite fic ever, the beautiful With Patience He Stands Waiting by emungere, which you should go read here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/400075. I just liked the idea that Mycroft might futilely try to keep Moriarty, with sexy, terrible results.
> 
> No beta or britpicker, so many apologies for spelling, grammar, and Americanisms. Also, nobody's voice is particularly on point here, but whatever. I don't think canon Mycroft would be like this anyway. He is a perfect angel who can do no wrong, and I love him so much I named my cat after him.
> 
> Nobody practices safe sex in this fic because they are geniuses but they are also stupid and lacking in self preservation instincts. Use a condom, kids!

Mycroft Holmes has two weaknesses. One is Sherlock, which is a false secret. Mycroft has been known to scoff at accusations of caring, but Sherlock is his brother, his genius junkie kid brother, and anyone with a keen eye will spot Mycroft’s inclination to protect him. Caring is not an advantage, but it is an unfortunate reflex of the shreds of humanity that still dangle from his ravaged skeleton. He does not regret compromising for Sherlock, even as carefully laid plans crumble with a whisk of the Belstaff coat.

He regrets compromising for his other weakness. He regrets everything about it, so much so that the regret has swollen beyond emotion, and is now a bulbous tumor in the landscape of his psyche, aching and devouring. Most men have an assortment of things that cripple them, be it liquor or gambling or false breasts. They stumble through their lives falling into pits of desire and scrambling back out of them, their years pockmarked with places they have broken before the idols that render them powerless. Mycroft prided himself for so long in a pristine life. The occasional tumble for his baby brother, an acceptable softness. But nothing besides.

He should have known that what he lacked in quantity, he would make up for in a weakness so perilous and foolish and ultimately evil, that there would be no scrambling away from it at the end of his plummet.

 

Mycroft always slips easily into driving on the other side of the road. It helps that he is only on the massive six lane highway for a half hour before the exit for small town middle of nowhere. Pines quickly replace neon fast food, thicker than anywhere in England, towering and encompassing in their greenery. The sky is clear and the weather warm, but the promise of impending lakeside retreat does little to settle Mycroft’s stomach.

He hasn’t been to the tiny Maine town in nearly six months. It was his intention, in the beginning, to go every month. A silly promise, really, and they’d both known it. Still, a ridiculous spiral of guilt curls through him. He pulls into the general store. The house must be well stocked, but it seems rude to arrive empty handed. He buys two bottles of California red wine, and then, on a whim, a bottle of cheap champagne. The girl behind the counter smiles at him when he asks for cigarettes.

“Are you from England?” she asks.

“Texas,” he says, winking at her. She giggles.

Outside in the sun, he’s not sure why he flirted with her. It must be the fresh Maine air, triggering a playfulness in him that he otherwise buries in the deepest graves of his heart. A dangerous sensation. A falsehood that this will end well.

The road to the house is winding and unpaved. There are several other oversized homes along the way, though they are not visible from the road. You might not know they were there at all, except for their faux-rustic mailboxes, complete with moving red flags that no one ever touches, dotting the entrances to long, neat, dirt driveways. Mycroft’s is all the way at the end. He thinks of it as his house, though he is only ever there briefly, a few select times a year. He certainly pays for it.

He did not text or call ahead to announce his arrival. It is the last weekend of the month, their planned time together, though it is much earlier in the day than he is usually expected. Then again, he has been so many months absent, he supposes that perhaps he is not expected at all.

The house is large, but not too large as to be conspicuous, at least in America. Older than many of the mansions of the neighborhood, if the spattering of wealthy vacation homes can be called that. Mycroft likes the house. It feels gothic and elegant and secret. Appropriate. The modest used Toyota is parked in its spot. Mycroft pulls his rental car beside it.

Mycroft goes for his key in his pocket, but when he tries the knob, he finds the front door open.

“Hello?” he calls into the cool, dark entryway. The air-conditioning is on, its dull hum the only sound to be heard.

The house is impeccably clean. Mycroft leaves his bags in the hall, and brings the wine and cigarettes to the kitchen. Through the sliding glass doors, he can see the porch, with the grill open and encrusted with char and fat, and towels hung to dry across the rail. Beyond it, the yard, green and trim, slopping down to the lake. Mycroft takes off his jacket and rolls up his shirt sleeves. He opens the refrigerator, eyeing the fresh red meat and raw vegetables and imported beer. He almost takes one, and then thinks better of it. There is fine whiskey in the cabinet above the stove. Mycroft pours himself an inch.

Out on the lake, glittering and black, is the bob and splash of a swimmer. Even at a distance, through the sun and surf, Mycroft knows who it is, and why the house is empty.

Mycroft’s forearms look exceedingly pale in the sunlight. He envies, for a moment, the luxury of a permanent vacation. Then he recalls how it would make his mind atrophy, and hurries, the best he can without running, down to the stretch of splintering wooden dock that juts out into the water.

The swimmer has spotted him, and nears, like a shark on the hunt. Mycroft braces himself.

Jim Moriarty crawls from the water like a creature from the deep.

His hair is his natural black, and not the horrendous dyed blond it was the last time Mycroft was here. He’s considerably more muscular, the pronounced lines of abdominal strength flexing as Jim bends for his towel and scrubs it across his hair, spiking it up. He squints at Mycroft, and cocks his head, but says nothing, not even as Mycroft’s eyes linger over the cling of Jim’s bathing suit.

“I’m early,” Mycroft says. “I apologize.”

“You’re six months late,” Jim says. He laughs like a hyena, like the prey is already dead, the carcass already stinking, the bones ready to be ravaged. It gives Mycroft half an erection, right there on the dock. Jim can probably smell it.

Still laughing, still toweling his hair, Jim shoves past him on the dock. The press of his palm to Mycroft’s chest is damp, but there’s no force in it. He’s posturing. Jim is happy to see him. Mycroft smiles to himself as Jim walks up to the house and slips inside. He stands of the dock, basking a bit in the sun, taking in the lake. He ignores his internal alarm system, his screaming misgivings, his enormous, cancerous regret. He finishes his drink.

 

Jim is eating ice cream out of it’s cardboard pint when Mycroft re-enters the kitchen. It’s so remarkably benign and domestic that it nearly warms what is left of Mycroft’s heart.

“You don’t write,” Jim says. “You don’t call. You don’t telegram. ‘I’m very busy being important. Stop. I stroke my enormous cock thinking of you. Stop. Couldn’t fake some tears at Sherlock’s funeral. Stop. Hairline ever receding. Stop.” He sucks chocolate off the spoon pornographically. “Not even a care package? Plastic dicks and proper Cadbury’s? A Kinder Egg so I can choke myself to death? You know that’s why Americans can’t have them.”

“You know I can’t,” Mycroft says, a little uselessly. Jim does know, and Mycroft knows he knows, and Jim knows that Mycroft knows that Jim knows. He’s not sure why they are even speaking.

“I thought keeping me here was proof that you could do anything,” Jim says. “It’s practically necromancy. Keeping the dead dancing. Suppose that makes you a necrophiliac.”

“I’ve been worse things,” Mycroft says. Jim shoves the spoon into the ice cream dramatically, deep enough that it stands independent, like Excalibur in the stone.

“Do you have some penance for me?” Jim says, spreading his hands, asking for a bounty. Mycroft only raises an eyebrow. “Ah, you aren’t sure what crime you’ve committed. Let’s see.” Jim leans the side of his hip on the edge of the counter and crosses his ankles, raising one hand to tick off reasons on his fingers.

“You left me here in Americana Nouveu Riche berry mocktails and aqua-yoga hell for six months, alone with these absolute cretins masquerading as an excuse for swine, in a house with cameras I can’t find, but they must be there, because every time I set up internet access, a very pretty young blond man comes with a revolver and forcibly removes it after I fuck him against the barbeque I have gotten far too skilled at using. But you can’t even be watching, because otherwise I would have gotten to fuck him again when he came to make me re-bleach my hair at gunpoint, which admittedly would have been a fun way to spend an afternoon.”

Mycroft moves towards Jim, then around him. Jim keeps his hands to himself, though all the places they are not touching burn. Mycroft fixes himself another drink.

“I brought cigarettes,” Mycroft says.

“I quit. You would not believe the wrath of ten trophy wives when I showed up at book club smelling of tobacco.”

Mycroft hides his smirk. “What are you reading?”

“I picked American Psycho to upset them, and they all love it,” Jim says with disgust.

Mycroft laughs properly then.

“This is not supposed to be a punishment,” Jim says lowly.

“You are an internationally wanted criminal, and something of a mass murderer,” Mycroft said.

“I blew my brains out,” Jim says, crossing his arms. “Splat, brains all over my crumbling empire.”

“And yet I can practically hear your mind, ticking away inside your skull,” Mycroft says.

“Tick tick tick.” His playfulness drops, ever so slightly. “Only Mycroft Holmes has the ego to leave a bomb unattended for six months. So sure there’s nothing left to detonate.”

“Do the ladies of your book club make for good sadists? Will they soon be all the snipers and assassins and torturers you need?” Mycroft asks. He slides the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, because he has not quit, not entirely. He takes one out and loosens his tie.

“They’re not ladies, they’re girls, and they’re as bored as I am,” Jim says. “Not to mention they all have houses full of guns.”

“I thought you might enjoy America,” Mycroft said.

“I’m not your pet,” Jim says. There’s edge in his voice now. He uncrosses his ankles, stands properly, and Mycroft must never, ever forget just how much of a predator Jim is, instinctually, on a core level. “You might keep me, and this might be a pretty cage, but you have to at least come and play with me. Otherwise I might start to bite.”

Mycroft lights his cigarette. All the tension slips out of Jim’s body, and he is nothing but a mockery of a kept husband again.

“Not inside,” he whines. “The girls will think its me.”

Shortly after that, Mycroft sets off the smoke alarm.

 

Jim cooks dinner. He has indeed mastered the grill. He sharpens his knives and trims fat and commands fire. Jim looks young in a soft cotton t-shirt and jeans. His hair is free of product, and it flops across his forehead. Mycroft has another drink on the deck and simultaneously watches the sun set and watches Jim excel at what must be one of the most intellectually stimulating activities left in his life.

“I am watching, you know,” Mycroft says as Jim sets a plate in front of him. They’re having dinner outside, as the temperature is pleasant. Jim perches on the edge of a deck chair that is sloped in such a way that sitting upright in it is impossible. Everything about this place is disarming.

“You do go half mast for the voyeur thing,” Jim says. He spins a steak knife across his knuckles. “I never quite understood. But I am a tactile learner.” He hits his consonants like staccato notes. Mycroft quite enjoys the natural rhythm of his speech, when he is not putting on camp voices or threatening with dark growls.

“You haven’t gone as mad as I thought you might,” Mycroft says. He cuts into his steak. It’s bloodier than he normally likes it, but when he puts it in his mouth, it is perfect. Easily one of the best things he has ever eaten. Jim immediately sees it, and his mouth twitches in a grin he can’t quite control. It’s unfortunate how much they appreciate each other’s carnal pleasures.

“I was already mad,” Jim says. He swirls his red wine, the California that Mycroft brought. “Bit of fresh air, regular exercise, healthy eating. Isn’t that what they prescribe for madness?”

“Is that what’s keeping the house standing? Fresh air?”

“It’s such a nice house,” Jim says. “And my daddy bought it for me. I try to be nice to daddy’s presents.”

Mycroft wrinkles his nose, and Jim laughs, looking out over the lake.

“It’s unsettling,” Mycroft says.

“You eat it up,” Jim says.

“That the house is still standing. It’s unsettling that you haven’t burned it down, or buried bodies in the cellar, or painted horrid poetry on the walls with your own blood.”

Jim makes a face. “Don’t knock my poetry until you’ve read it. I’ve been told it’s quite lyrical.”

Mycroft’s lips quirk. He takes another bite of steak and chews slowly.

“To be quite honest,” Mycroft says, “it was a genuine possibility in my mind that you would be dead by now.”

Jim sips his wine and grins. “Would you send the blond boy with the gun to put me down like a rabid dog?” He sits forward and puts on a scolding face. “No! Bad boy! Too many syllables in your murder haikus!”

“Are you actually writing poetry? That might be the most atrocious thing I’ve heard all week,” Mycroft says.

“Then London has gone awfully soft without me,” Jim says. “Don’t you miss it? The sheer stimulation of having me around, fucking everything up?”

“You mistake me for my brother.”

“But that is why you’re here, right? Stimulation?” Jim stretches out his legs and rests his feet on the short table between them, wiggling his toes.

Mycroft leans back in the chair, and immediately regrets it. It shapes his body into an unattractive, vulnerable curve. Jim sniffs like he wants to sink his teeth in. Mycroft cannot be the one to break first. He has so much of the power now, in his deprivation, in his restraint. Then again, perhaps it is foolish to believe that Jim could not smell his want the moment Mycroft’s feet touched American soil.

“I’m here because the house is still standing.”

“I’ve been a good boy,” Jim says. He chews on the end of his index finger.

“No,” Mycroft says. “I don’t think you have.”

Jim raises an eyebrow. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Jim pouts theatrically. “Booo.” He kicks his feet and stands, clearing the bloody plates. Mycroft watches him and touches his own mouth thoughtfully. He is warm, and slightly hazy with alcohol. A mosquito bites him on his bare forearm. The sun slips away entirely, leaving the sky gasping for the last of the daylight.

Jim is washing dishes when Mycroft steps inside. He could not look anymore harmless if he tried, which is the most dangerous trick Jim can play on the world. There is an edge of terror to the feeling that grips Mycroft while he watches, but it is only on the edges. The messy dark center of the sensation is something much more fierce.

“What is the worst thing you imagine I’ve done, here in picturesque Dullsville?” Jim asks. “I have no internet. I have no cell phone. I have no passport, limited funds, and in a country where they give out guns like candy, I can’t get anyone to sell me a piece for any amount of money. Would you know that even the local small-time drug dealers won’t give me something to soothe my night terrors?” Jim looks up from the soap and gives Mycroft a knowing glance. “I admit, you pull the strings to your little puppet show remarkably well, especially at such a distance.” He slides a freshly sharpened knife through a folded sponge, stroking it with care. “What terrible thing do you picture me capable of, with the great big nothing you’ve granted me?”

“You have time. All the time in the world,” Mycroft says. “And you’re you.”

“Flatterer,” Jim says.

“Not at all,” Mycroft says.

Jim hums. “Six months. Why are you here, Mycroft?”

Mycroft licks his lips, sighs, and suddenly feels adrift, standing in the over-air-conditioned kitchen with his empty wine glass and the man who killed his brother.

“Just take what you want,” Jim says, rinsing the knife. “Everything must be this elaborate chess maneuver with you, always calculate your losses, always keep an eye on the queen. Fuck, just see what you want, and take it.”

“How barbaric,” Mycroft says.

“Oh? And what are you?” Jim says, shutting off the faucet. “A nobleman? A saint? An angel, flown here on God’s graces? What a spanking you’ll get at the pearly gates.”

Something pulls tight inside of Mycroft. Quivers.

“That sounds like Mycroft Holmes’s A+ spank bank fantasy,” Jim says, beaming. “Nothing would make you squirt like getting spanked by the hand of God.”

“What an unsavory image,” Mycroft says.

“Then again, you do like getting dicked by the devil.” Jim licks his lips.

“How grandiose, to think of yourself as Satan.”

Jim dries his hands on his t-shirt, and then spreads his arms wide in an offer. “Can you think of a better way to describe me than sin personified?”

Mycroft has every intention to stand still and insult him. That his feet betray him is a terrible sign that he has already lost.

Jim laughs as Mycroft shoves him, hard, hard enough that Jim goes sprawling across the floor, cackling, and then Mycroft is on top of him with all his weight, so that Jim, even with all his new muscle, can do nothing but squirm. Mycroft puts both hands around Jim’s neck and presses until the laugh dies, until his face is bright, and his lips, still grinning, are very nearly blue, and only when Jim is limp does Mycroft kiss him, sweetly, like they are in love, and Jim cannot kiss back because Jim cannot breathe, and Mycroft cherishes that moment, ruts once against Jim’s leg, savoring the drag of thigh against cock.

Mycroft relinquishes Jim’s neck and lifts his weight only enough to flip Jim. He does not check to ensure Jim is still alive, but several gasping hacking breaths soon inform him. Mycroft puts a broad hand across Jim’s back and holds him down, though he is heaving, his face pressed into the tile floor. His jeans are too tight to shove down with one hand, but then Jim reads Mycroft’s mind and cants his hips up, just enough for Mycroft to reach around an undo his button and fly. Mycroft pulls down the jeans just to Jim’s knees. Jim is not wearing pants. Mycroft bends and bites at the curve of Jim’s bare ass, too hard. Jim yelps.

Mycroft wants to just shove inside of Jim, to be the barbarian Jim accuses him of, but instead he spits on his finger and pushes it into Jim’s hole. He instantly regrets his courtesy, because not only is Jim already loose and slick, when Mycroft pulls his finger out, the unmistakable sticky whiteness of another man’s semen clings to him.

“It’s been a busy day,” Jim says in response to Mycroft’s pause. His voice is gravel from the choking.

Mycroft opens his trousers and abandons his shreds of decency. He fucks into Jim without care, without restraint, without thought, and the empty, blinding pleasure makes him gasp and stutter. He fucks Jim as hard as his body can manage, like an animal, using him, like there is even a chance he can break him. Jim screams and Mycroft treasures each cry like gems of humanity. Jim yells Mycroft’s name, again, and then again, and Mycroft seizes and empties into Jim, the world spinning out into darkness, the sounds of his own shattering echoing in the empty, silent house.

When the world is clear again, Mycroft is on his back on the floor. Jim is naked, and sitting astride Mycroft’s chest. He’s stroking his cock thoughtfully, the red marks of arousal and strangulation occupying his bare chest. His cock is so close to Mycroft’s face, close enough that Mycroft can smell the sweat and pre-come and lake water.

“You fuck like you wish you hated it,” Jim says. “It’s the fucking hottest thing.” There’s already bruising around his neck. It’s going to blossom into something purple and ugly.

“You’re welcome,” Mycroft says.

Jim laughs like the maniac he is. He tips forward and presses his cock to Mycroft’s lips. Mycroft opens his mouth, lets his jaw go loose. Jim crawls over him until he looks like he might do a push-up, his cock nudging the back of Mycroft’s throat. Mycroft lets every muscle in his body go limp, lets every worry slip away, lets existence be meaningless.

Jim fucks his mouth with newfound stamina, and spews profanity blended with Mycroft’s name until he comes with a shout down Mycroft’s throat. Mycroft doesn’t even taste it.

They lie next to each other on the cold tile for a long time, breathing and not thinking.

“Welcome home, honey,” Jim finally says.

Mycroft cannot believe himself when he laughs. He can’t remember the last time he laughed, really laughed, with genuine amusement. He lets it warm his chest for ten seconds before he flags it as a sign of his ruin and files it away with the rest of his regret.

 

They take a shower together like they are normal.

“I’m glad you are at least amusing yourself sexually here,” Mycroft says, running a soaping hand along the cleft of Jim’s arse.

“Nobody satisfies me like you do, daddy,” Jim says. He has to stand on his tip toes to kiss Mycroft, but it doesn’t stop him from kissing filthy, like Mycroft is a singular and unique delicacy that he must devour for how decadent it tastes.

“I’m not as young as I used to be,” Mycroft says.

“That is how time works,” Jim says. Some of his edge is gone. He even seems a little sleepy, which Mycroft has never seen.

The mattress is not the one that Mycroft bought. It’s different, one of those wretched foam ones that is like sinking into a sand pit.

“You bought a sex mattress, and then stopped showing up to have sex,” Jim says. “This is better for my back.”

“You don’t have sex in this bed while I am away?”

“Why would I?” Jim says, like this is something obvious.

For a moment, Mycroft isn’t certain he can simply crawl into bed with Jim and fall asleep. It’s too intimate, too domestic. Last time he was here he’d gone downstairs and stared at the ceiling until morning. But Jim peels back the sheets and slips in, naked and damp. He seems earnestly tired, and there is an easiness in his smile as he beckons to Mycroft.

“Please don’t sleep on the couch. It makes me feel like the world’s ugliest prostitute.”

“Do you really care?” Mycroft asks.

“Don’t you want me to?”

Mycroft sighs, tired of games, and slides into bed beside Jim. Jim puts a hand on Mycroft’s chest and draws circles in the hair there.

“What makes you more aroused,” Jim says. “Believing that you’ve cut my balls off entirely, and that my complete criminal impotency is the direct result of your brilliance and power, or believing that I am truly your intellectual equal, perhaps even your superior, and that I really have somehow subverted your great and watchful eye while being trapped in this gilded cage?”

“I’m not sure,” Mycroft says. “What is the truth?”

Jim scoffs.

“Come now,” Mycroft says.

“If you can’t intuit, why should I tell you?”

Mycroft sighs. “My intuition tells me it’s something in between. That this is a good cage, and that you are a savage match.”

Jim scoots closer to Mycroft, presses his body along Mycroft’s side, his cock half hard at Mycroft’s hip. He sticks his nose behind Mycroft’s ear and inhales.

“Maybe the smartest thing I ever did was not underestimating you,” Jim says.

“Flatterer,” Mycroft says.

 

The sunlight wakes him. Mycroft cannot recall the last time he has not woken to the shrill beeping of an alarm, or by the sheer rattle of his own nervous energy. But this waking is gentle, like an emergence. Inappropriate, all things considered.

But Jim is still asleep beside him. He looks nearly boyish in sleep, though Mycroft takes a breath to study the creases beside his eyes, undoubtedly put there by several decades of homicide. The thought twists through him, and Mycroft releases it, like a too-small fish.

He finds a dressing gown, his, he thinks, in the back of the closet and puts it on. He fancies some tea. Perhaps he will make a fry-up. He’s never been much of a cook, never had the time, but it might be pleasant to bring it to Jim in bed. A shadow of an apology, for his absence.

Unfortunately, there is a stranger in the kitchen.

She is blond and petite, with the body of someone with considerable leisure time dedicated to making each and every trouble area look exactly how she wishes it. She’s wearing a bikini that leaves little to the imagination, and her hair is pulled back into a neat ponytail. She’s not wearing makeup, so it’s unlikely she’s here to impress, but she’s also not wearing shoes, which demonstrates a level of comfort, with the house, with Jim, and with eight o’clock in the morning.

She startles when she sees Mycroft, but instantly relaxes into a smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she says, pressing a hand to her chest. “I had no idea anyone but Jim was here. You must be his husband.” She stretches out her hand in eager greeting, and Mycroft has no choice but to take it. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“I’m afraid I have not been awarded the same pleasure.”

She giggles, her eyes going wide. “You’re British! I didn’t realize. I’m Ashley. Jim and I go swimming every morning, you know, buddy system.” Her giggle is truly shrill. Mycroft begins to feel his drinks from the previous evening as a steady ache in the base of his skull. He moves around her and puts the kettle on the stove.

“There’s kombucha in the fridge,” Kim says. “Home grown. I brought it.”

“I’m certain tea will be fine,” Mycroft says.

“Ha, that’s so British!” She twists her hands in the towel draped around her neck. “It’s Mike, right?”

Mycroft resists the urge to roll his eyes. He just winces a smile at her.

“We were beginning to think you weren’t real,” Kim says.

“Yes, unfortunately I work quite a bit.”

“Darling, you’re early,” Jim says from the edge of the kitchen. He’s come down in his swimsuit and nothing else, his hair still ruffled from sleep, his towel hanging around his shoulders, mostly masking the bruise Mycroft is sure has bloomed overnight. His American accent is impeccable, slightly southern. Mycroft hasn’t heard it before, and it makes him feel a bit ill.

“No, you’re late,” Kim says. They greet each other with a kiss on either cheek.

“Mike kept me up late last night,” Jim says, winking at her. She giggles again. Mycroft presses his fingertips to his temples.

Jim comes over and presses his lips to Mycroft’s cheek. Mycroft arcs an eyebrow at him. Jim grins.

“Come on,” Jim says to Kim. “It won’t get any warmer if we wait.”

“That’s for sure,” Kim says, smiling and following Jim’s lead. They prance out to the porch and down the steps to the yard like children. Mycroft watches them, laughing and pushing at each other on the dock, stretching like they’re about to undertake a serious athletic endeavor, and then Kim shoving Jim into the water and yelping as she hurls herself after him.

Something insidious must be happening here. There is no other explanation.

Mycroft sits on the deck and drinks his tea. He allows himself another cigarette. The nicotine wakes his mind.

Jim and Kim swim out until they are only specks, and then swim back. Slower. When they get close enough, they appear to be in conversation. At the dock, their faces are stern. They part halfway up the lawn, Kim heading across the garden, and disappearing into the forest that defines the edge of the yard. She waves at Mycroft before she vanishes, and he waves back.

Jim is dripping and smirking as he ascends to the deck. There is a perfect ring of purple around his neck to mark the closeness of death.

“She thinks you tried to kill me,” Jim says.

“I almost did,” Mycroft admits.

“I told her it was kinky.”

“Not exactly a lie.”

“Mm.” Jim eyes Mycroft carefully. He takes the mostly empty mug from Mycroft’s hands, and then the cigarette, which he takes one long drag of before smudging out on the rail.

“I thought you quit,” Mycroft says.

Jim crawls into his lap. Trails of cold water transfer from Jim’s bare skin to Mycroft’s dressing gown, to his patch of exposed chest. Jim is covered in goosebumps, and there is a slight shiver in his jaw. Mycroft runs his fingers up Jim’s arms.

“Do you ever believe anything I say?” Jim asks. He wraps his arms around Mycroft’s neck, their noses bumping.

“Sometimes it’s not worth dissecting the lie,” Mycroft says. He rests his hands on Jim’s damp ribcage. Jim’s erection is near garish in his soaking swim trunks.

“I hope I’m not boring you,” Jim says, grinding his arse against Mycroft’s lap.

“If there’s one thing this is not, it’s boring,” Mycroft says.

Jim darts in and nips at Mycroft’s lips. Mycroft kisses him sharply, steals his breath.

“You wish you had something dull and simple instead?” Jim whispers against his jaw.

“I wish dull and simple had been enough,” Mycroft says. He tangles his fingers in Jim’s hair and pulls his head back so he can suck at that brilliant bruise. Jim groans.

Mycroft lifts him, stands, and throws Jim down on the low table. Jim cries out as his skull hits cheap wood. Mycroft yanks the wet swim trunks away, leaving Jim naked, his cock bobbing in the early morning sun.

Mycroft smears his face across Jim’s chest and stomach, rasping his stumble against the milky skin there. He wants to dig his fingers into Jim, to tear apart flesh and poke in the crevices between his bones, mush organs and muscle together until there is nothing left but pulp. He wants to personally and intimately reduce this man to nothing but pulp.

“Do it,” Jim moans. “Oh, god, I want you to.”

Mycroft pulls back, disturbed by what is lurking in his own mind. He stumbles back to the poorly shaped deck chair, slumps in it, leaving Jim panting and hard, splayed out on the table like an offering.

“Come on,” Jim says, propping himself up. “Really?”

Mycroft cups his own erection, briefly, before touching his own mouth.

“You bring out the worst in me,” he says softly.

Moriarty sits up. “You have no idea what’s going on here, do you?”

“Do you?” Mycroft asks earnestly.

Jim rakes his fingers through his hair and lets out an aggravated cry. “Your morality crisis is so dull. So dull and pointless and awful, and I won’t have that sort of energy in this house, I just won’t. This is a place of peace and acceptance, where we are allowed to be ourselves, so if you want to fuck me like a goddamn pornstar, go ahead, and if you want to kill me and paint a self portrait with my insides, please do, but if you come to the zoo and feed the animals, you cannot reach down their throats in regret, because you will lose an arm, and fuck me if you think I will not bite off your arm to maintain my zen, because I will, Mycroft Holmes, I will gnaw it right off.”

It’s half raw anger and half a mad sort of camp, and Mycroft cannot tell what is rotting brilliance and what is elegant insanity, and that is perhaps the crux of the entire issue.

Mycroft leans forward until he is out of the chair and kneeling at Jim’s feet.

“What do you want?” Mycroft asks him, running his hand up Jim’s thighs.

“To die, mostly,” Jim says.

“Why don’t you?” Mycroft takes Jim’s cock into his hand, pulls at it slowly.

“Seems like a kinda ordinary thing to do,” Jim says, breath hitching.

“You would rather be murdered?” Mycroft asks.

“I would rather be assassinated,” Jim says. “Or sacrificed. Or tortured to death. It would be nice for misery to be ripped from me, you know, maybe with a melon baller, or those three pronged gardening rakes, you know? I would like to lose, honestly lose, but I can’t find anybody who can beat me at this game. Not even Sherlock could beat me at this game.”

Mycroft puts Jim’s cock in his mouth to stop the confession. That Sherlock did beat him, that the only reason Jim did not get exactly the death he wanted is because of Mycroft. Because Mycroft has two weaknesses, and they both think the other one is dead.

 

Mycroft explores the house in the afternoon. He prowls through the rooms that Jim has furnished with fine leather and animal prints. A large taxidermy moose hangs above the fireplace in the den, a new addition since Mycroft’s last visit.

“Do you really not know where the cameras are?” Mycroft calls to the kitchen, where Jim is making some sort of marinade that involves whisking and reduction.

“What do you think, lover?” Jim yells back.

“They’re still running.”

“Maybe your voyeurism isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

Mycroft smiles to himself.

 

In a terrible twist, Kim comes to dinner. Mycroft is two scotches deep before he realizes just why Jim has invited her.

“Jim has been, oh, just such a wonderful comfort,” Kim says, reaching out and touching Jim’s hand. “Since my husband’s death, it hasn’t been easy to keep up with my routine, but Jim has made things fun again.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Mycroft says politely.

“It’s the most terrible thing,” Jim says in his American accent. “There has been these awful murders. Can you believe it? In this nice community.”

Mycroft nearly chokes on his beef. “Really? How remarkable that I have not heard about it.”

“Well, the first two were ruled accidents,” Kim says. “But we think something got covered up.” She gives Jim a conspiratorial glance.

“The local law enforcement is not great,” Jim says. “We’ve been doing a little amateur sleuthing, you know, just to make sure.”

“I know how it sounds, but I am just so sure something else is going on,” Kim says. “They said it was an accident, but Richard’s death was just so brutal, and he was just so strong and smart, I can’t imagine an accident with a boat motor like that, I just can’t.” Kim chokes up.

“Boat motor,” Jim says, catching Mycroft’s eye and bouncing his eyebrows. “Brutual.”

Mycroft sighs. “What a terrible thing. How kind of you, Jim, to be a friend in a difficult time.”

“Oh, all us girls just love him,” Kim says. “He’s really been our rock.”

“Aw, well, I try,” Jim says, doing a rather ridiculous impression of bashful.

 

Mycroft wishes the small town serial killing of wealthy husbands was not a relief, but it is. It’s not drug rings, and it’s not assassinations of government officials, and it’s not terrorism, and it’s not Sherlock. A few dead rich Americans seems like something Mycroft can abide, if the world keeps spinning, and their wives get to play Nancy Drew. It’s not ideal, but it’s a solution.

“A boat motor?” Mycroft asks with a gasp as he sinks down onto Jim’s cock. Jim is tied to the bed, too tight, cutting off his circulation. Mycroft fingered himself extensively while Jim writhed untouched on the bed, but the stretch is still significant. This is not an activity Mycroft regularly engages in.

“It was beautiful,” Jim says, his breathing labored. “First one was one of those lawn mowers that you sit on and drive like some kind of fucking grass killing robot throne. Then the boat motor. Then the table saw. You should have seen—“ He groans as Mycroft raises up and reseats himself too quickly. “the beautiful fucking table saw. Like a Jackson Pollack all over the walls. Had a tricky time passing that one off as a whoopsie though.”

Jim’s hips thrust and Mycroft backhands him.

“It’s so B horror movie,” Mycroft says.

“Soon they’ll give me a fun nickname, and I’ll get to send nonsensical codes to the newspapers. It’s a hobby, you know, a way to pass the time,” Jim says. “Maybe I’ll frame someone in the end, oh fuck, and either make them really believe they did it, oh god, just like that, oh fuck, or I’ll stage a suicide, real fucked up, with a couple extra, ah, ah, bodies all messy and chopped up, and, oh fuck—“

Jim’s hips slam up and he comes inside Mycroft. Mycroft slows, slightly disappointed.

“Sorry,” Jim says. “Sorry, sorry. You can’t get me all excited like that.”

“Apparently,” Mycroft says.

But then Jim gives him spectacular head with two fingers fucking against his prostate, and Mycroft finds there is very little left to complain about.

 

Unfortunately, he wakes with the barrel of a gun pressed to his forehead. Ice spreads through his chest and stomach. Jim curled beside him, one hand keeping the gun in its place, the other working Mycroft to a full and aching erection

“Kim loaned me hers,” Jim says. “She normally never would, these girls are so into their guns, but I told her I was afraid of you, that you might try to kill me again.” He does a little baby voice. “You’re a big scary guy, you know. So stressed from work, and you just take it all out on me. I just don’t know what you might do.”

“Enough,” Mycroft says, wishing his arousal was not eating his frozen fear.

“I don’t think so,” Jim says. He jerks Mycroft properly, and Mycroft can’t help the whimper that leaves his lips.

“A pretty cage is still a cage,” Jim whispers into Mycroft’s ear. He bites Mycroft’s neck, breaks the skin.

“I can’t do anything about it,” Mycroft says.

“I don’t care,” Jim says. “You know what happens to wild animals in cages? They eat and they sleep and they play and they shit, and then one day they just up and kill their trainers, because they’re wild fucking animals trapped in goddamn cages.”

Jim’s hand speeds over Mycroft’s cock, and Mycroft chokes with pleasure as he tries desperately not to give Jim what he wants.

“I’ll buy you a cage,” Jim says. “A real one, a real gold one. Hand feed you scraps. Make you kneel for them, make you kneel so I can fuck your face and come on it, and then maybe give you a treat for being a good boy.”

“What makes you think that I am not also a wild animal?” Mycroft manages.

Jim shoves the gun into Mycroft’s mouth.

“The difference between you and I, Mycroft Holmes, is that I have no troubles putting an aggressive and dangerous animal down.”

Mycroft can’t help the orgasm that tears through him. The gun tastes like shame in his mouth.

Jim pulls the trigger.

It clicks. Clicks. Clicks. Jim laughs, pulls the gun out, and flops back on the bed.

“That was hot,” Jim says.

Mycroft flips him, spanks him until the beginnings of black bruises bleed on the edges of red skin, and then fucks him until he cannot string together the words to form the fear that if James Moriarty can get a gun in Mycroft’s carefully constructed prison, some day he will also have his way out.

 

Jim packs Mycroft some food for the airplane.

“Nothing that exceeds whatever the fuck that stupid fluid rule is,” Jim says. “Honestly, of all the ways to make a bomb, they always have to do the ones that make those security lines a huge hassle. That’s the real terrorism.”

Mycroft laughs. He hates himself for laughing. He hates himself for leaving. For leaving Jim alive, for leaving with blood on his hands, for leaving at all. He makes a call about the gun, to the blond that Jim will almost certainly fuck again. It feels futile.

“Maybe not six months this time, dearest,” Jim says. He’s in jeans and nothing else, in stark contrast to Mycroft’s three piece suit. Mycroft wishes he had gone swimming. Next time.

“I will do my best,” Mycroft says.

Jim kisses him straddling hungry and sweet, like he truly is Mycroft’s poor neglected husband and not a nuclear time bomb.

“Be a good boy,” Mycroft says.

“Always, daddy,” Jim says. He licks up Mycroft’s jaw and bites Mycroft’s earlobe. The bruises on his neck are now laced with a sickly green.

Mycroft kisses him goodbye, and wonders briefly if perhaps he will never see him again.

But Mycroft Holmes has two weaknesses, and in the end there is nothing he can do but be devoured.


End file.
